Russell Nohelty is a writer, publisher, and
speaker. He runs Wannabe Press, which publishes weird books for weird people,
and hosts The Business of Art podcast, which helps creatives build better
businesses.

Russell is the author of Gumshoes: The Case of
Madison’s Father and My Father Didn’t Kill Himself, along with the creator ofthe
Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter, Gherkin Boy, and Katrina Hates the Dead graphic
novels. He makes books that are as entertaining and weird as they are thought
provoking.

Social Media Links: @russellnohelty on Twitter
and Instagram. /russellnohelty on Facebook

Blurb:

Sammy's had a tough life. His
father is abusive. His mother is an alcoholic. He developed pulmonary fibrosis
from asbestos and need an oxygen tank to breath.

His family is poor and getting poorer.

One day his mother's had enough and steal him
away to a life on the run. She'd rather be a fugitive than subject Sammy to his
father's rage.

It doesn't take long for life on the run with a
sick child to catch up to her. In order to keep Sammy alive she has no choice
but to move in with her emotionally abusive grandfather.

Sammy just wants a normal life. He just wants to
get along, but when he meets a homeless alien that all changes. Now, he has to
help her fix her ship and get off the planet.

This is a book about families, broken homes, and
the power of friendship. Whether you enjoy whimsy, dark humor, or coming of age
stories, there is something for you inside these pages.

Actually, it wasn’t really a slap
either. It was – what’s the sound a fist makes when it connects with a woman’s
jaw? Like a woomp, or a thud, or a thwonk.

Well, that was the sound. The sound
of my mother being punched across the jaw by my father; her hair, her body,
suspended motionless for a second, then falling gracefully in slow motion, as I
watched horrified and petrified, nestled in the corner behind her.

He’d
aimed for me, but Mom jumped between us so that I wouldn’t face his assault.
She always did that.

She
told me that the initial blow was always the worst; that she became numb after
the third or fourth hit.

At
least that’s what she told me. I never believed her. I too often saw the pain
on her face when he kicked her ribs for the eighth and ninth times. I watched
helpless as the tears welled in her eyes.
It was hell.

Dad
screamed the vilest things imaginable while he beat her. I blocked out the
worst of it through years of willful self-delusion. But a few burrowed deep
into my memory. I used to wake at night, drenched in cold sweat. His screams
jolted me out of my daydreams. They snapped me back to reality.

“You
vile, worthless WHORE!”

“Lying sack
of shit!”

“Dumb
Bitch!”

Those were his favorites. She would
cry and cry, for hours it seemed, until giant snot bubbles came out of her
nose. He punched, kicked, screamed, and stomped my mother within inches of her
life on more than a dozen occasions.

She
spent weeks in the hospital, battling to breathe, hoping to die. Punctured
lungs, broken noses, and cracked rib cages became the norm; Police reports and
flimsy denials, standard operating procedure. He didn’t like lies, but truths
only made him madder and the beatings more vicious. After a spell we kept our
mouth shut and did our bid –hoping to one day get paroled.

*

Mom
wouldn’t let him take out his anger on me. Not on her twelve-year old baby with
an oxygen tank; not to the little kid whose simple existence was a miracle. Not
to the kid that she made this way.

And I don’t mean in the way her egg
and his sperm did the freaky-deeky so I could eventually be popped out nine
months later.

Though of course that’s 100%
accurate in the most literal sense; I mean you could interpret it that way for
sure. But more so my condition was brought on by their negligence.

I have a condition called pulmonary fibrosis.
There’s a couple of causes from genetics to environmental factors. It basically
meant my lungs were all messed up, scarred over, and didn’t work right. If they
worked worse, I’d be on a lung transplant list, but they work just well enough
that I’ll just have shitty lung disease for the rest of my shortened life.

Now, one of the causes of pulmonary
fibrosis could have been my mother smoking during pregnancy. As much as I’d
love to blame her for that, she took impeccable care while I baked inside her.
She didn’t smoke, took prenatal vitamins, listened to classical music, and
stayed away from fish. She didn’t even drink. Not one drop. It wasn’t until after
my diagnosis that the pills and booze took hold.

No, the cause of my condition comes
from being poor; really, really poor; so poor that we couldn’t afford adequate
housing. Poor enough to squat anyplace that accepted our meager cash, even if
it meant buildings riddled with asbestos.

As a child I was susceptible to all
sorts of things that my parents’ immune system could withstand.

I
remember being a normal kid; playing sports, running, jumping, living outside a
protective cocoon. I remember biting into a fresh apple without tasting sand. I
remember breathing without pins and needles stabbing my lungs. I remember a
life where my parents didn’t blame themselves for my existence, where even for
a moment we were blissfully happy.

I
mean blissfully happy. Over the moon, laugh every night, Norman Rockwell, Kodak
stock portrait happy. The kind of happy we would nauseatingly shake our heads
at today. The kind of happy that breaks my heart to think about, because I can
never have it again.

Seven
though, that was a magical year. Dad came home every night to a warm cooked
meal. He regaled Mom with stories of his day as she sat enthralled on the edge
of her seat. We made pillow forts and watched old movies that went way over my
head, all cuddled up around the shitty CRT Dad found at a yard sale. We were
dirt poor. We didn’t care though. We didn’t need things to be happy. We just
needed to be together.

It
wasn’t meant to last though. I started getting winded at soccer practice, then
I could barely make it home from school, my chest began to burn and ache
throughout the day and into the night. Then, the wretched coughing started,
followed by the blood.

We
went to doctor after doctor after doctor and our meager finances ran dry, but
Mom and Dad were vigilant. They endured any cost, no matter how high, to ensure
that my health was sound.

Specialist
after specialist shook their head and confirmed my parents’ worst fears. By my
eighth birthday it was a foregone conclusion. They didn’t get me toys, or video
games, or even books. They got me two shiny oxygen tanks. I still use them to
this day. Happy Birthday to me, right?

*

As
you can imagine, having a kid that lived off oxygen tanks, with hardly any
immune system, all because you couldn’t afford a nicer place, puts a strain on
a marriage financially, emotionally, and physically; even to the most
well-adjusted, intelligent, and/or thoughtful among us.

My
father was none of the above. Seeing a constant reminder of his shortcomings
was too much for him to handle. He, who was supposed to protect me, instead
created a feeble monster – kept alive by tubes and machines.

It pissed him off. It pissed him off
more every time he looked at me. He was too simple, too stupid, and too
cowardly to look inside himself – to beat himself, so he redirected it out onto
everybody around him. He was once a gentle giant, now he was consumed by rage.

My mother’s love, on the other hand,
collapsed upon itself like a neutron star. She grew numb and callused. She gave
freely and unrepentantly to my father, who for decades fed off that love to
make it through the day. When his rage boiled over, she loved harder and
harder. Surely her love could bring him back from the brink. Surely they could
get through this together. Surely, she would not have to go it alone.

No matter how much she gave, it fell
into a black hole of rage and bitterness. He shunned her, ignored her, berated
her, and eventually beat her when she tried to reason with him. It’s very hard
to love a man that changed so violently and so quickly. She gave everything of
herself away to him and she had nothing left for the child that needed it.

All she could do was use her numb,
powerless body to take a beating for me. She had no other way to show her love.
She’d given it all away, and my disease overloaded her circuits. It overloaded
both of their circuits. I was the surge that fried their marriage.

What
a shitty place for an eight-year old to be.

*

Mom
was a night owl by necessity if not by choice. She hated sleep. More so, she
hated dreaming. Once she dreamed of nice homes, butterflies, and fairy tales;
that her life would be better, hopeful, possibly, even kind.

Those
dreams soured in my ninth year and curdled in my twelfth. By then she hated
dreams, not for the nightmares, which showed her the true horrors of her mind,
but for the dreams, which filled her with the hope of a better life. There was
no better life for Mom, and she hated the flutter in her stomach that
accompanied that moment of wakening where she believed her dreams were
realities.

Cheap
wine helped. Lots of cheap wine. She wasn’t picky. It never filled her with
restful sleep, but it blocked her dreams from invading her reality. Five, six,
some nights eight glasses of wine would be the only thing that allowed her to
sleep. When we couldn’t afford wine, she skimmed my pills. She skimmed a lot of
pills. I learned to live in pain to numb hers.

*

The
night after her vicious beating she wandered up to bed early, nursing her
wounds. I begged her to call an ambulance, but she refused.

“I
know my own body, Sammy. I’m fine,” she assured me. One day those words will be
emblazoned on her tombstone. “You can get to bed yourself tonight”.

Mom never let me get myself to bed.
Something was amiss. Every night she tucked me in, kissed me on the cheek, and
pulled the oxygen mask over my face.

I
stopped wearing them most nights. Lying in bed never did much to aggravate my
condition. My heart calmed, my breathing slowed, and my body stopped shaking
profusely. Only my mind raced faster in the darkness.

*

I
never slept well. I tossed and turned. I twitched and fidgeted. I sighed and
harrumphed. I jerked awake and laid silently for hours. I peeked into hallways
and listened for fights, whether arguments or bare knuckle brawls. I stared at
the ceiling or out the window toward the stars, wishing I could get lost in
them forever. I waited patiently for an ambulance or a weekly run to the
emergency room.

In those rare instances when I slept
early and deeply – when the stars aligned, and the sleep fairies released me
from their lambada between awake and sleep – those were undoubtedly the nights
when I woke gasping for air.

Those nights worried me the most – ironically,
they kept me up more than any other. I hated choking and gasping for every
molecule of air. But more than that, I feared an oxygen tank exploding in the
night and killing me in my sleep – or worse, leaving me disfigured and even
more crippled. I feared I would never wake up and I feared I would.

*

I enjoyed dreams though, when they
came. My imagination was the only place I could become normal again. My dreams
weren’t filled with the knights, Dark Knights, spaceships, fantasies, or wild
pursuits that accompanied most peoples’ dreams. They were filled with the simple
moments, the lost moments, the hopeful moments that were never meant to be.

I dreamed of my fourth birthday,
when my Father built a swing set out of discarded lumber. The stupid thing
wouldn’t sit straight, and after a week it crumbled to the ground. “But I built
it, Sammy. You have to give me credit for that.”

I did of course. It did little to
offset the brutality of his later years, but he did get credit for being a good
father eight years of my life. I dreamt often of him carrying me around the house
in his arms when I was just a tiny poop machine. He sang to me; terribly, of
course, but he sang to me. The look of love in his eyes in those dreams, I
tried to hold onto that, remember that there used to be a warm hearted man
where now a cold, brutal monster lurked.

Dreams never filled me with the pain
and suffering they elicited in my Mom. Dreams were what my life should have
been; could have been; might have been; and one day might be again. I know it
was a stupid thing to hope, but hope is all somebody sickly has most days, most
moments of most days. Pills, injections, doctors, abuses, and constant pain
drove you insane, something had to pull you back from the edge. For me, it was
those dreams.

*

It
was well past midnight when her frail hands jostled me awake. I’d been deep in
a dream about my father teaching me how to grip a baseball bat. Mom clamped my
lips tight. “Get up. And be quiet about it.”

“But—”

“Don’t question me! Just do it!” I
hadn’t heard my mother stern in a long time.

Her
frail desperation masked the fire of a warrior; a determined, stoic yeoman.
Most people, places, things, and even ideas would have petered and died when
faced with the Hell she dealt with on a daily basis.

“Stay quiet,” she said. “Grab your
oxygen tanks.”

“Where are we—?”

“Just grab them, alright?”

I scooped up my two tanks into their
ripped backpack case and squeezed her hand. Her pulsed thumped loudly through
her cadaverous fingers.

“Careful,” she whispered over her
shoulders. “Only step where I step.”

I
mimicked her pointed feet as we tiptoed down the hallway and down the stairs
toward the front lawn. It was slow going. My mother calculated every move
carefully, tiptoeing over the cracks and loose floorboards of the landlord’s
shoddy ramshackle house.

Every move she made was masterful, a
stroke of genius. It was as if a ballerina replaced my mother. She knew which
floorboard wouldn’t creak and where the safest landings were. She slid ever so
carefully down the banister so that the middle three stairs wouldn’t squeak –
and jumped off centimeters before it swayed and cracked.

We eventually reached the front
door. She swung it open just enough to avoid tipping off the rusty hinges and
slid me outside. Her face peeked out of the door, then disappeared back inside.

“Run!” she screamed through the
partially closed door. I stood frozen for seconds that felt like years. I heard
Mom’s ragdoll body crash against the door with a heavy thump.

My
feet separated from my brain and rushed forward on their own. They slammed into
the door once, twice, three times. My brain knew it was a bad idea, but the
rest of my body didn’t care. My tiny frail body reared back a fourth time and
finally crashed through the door.

The
force knocked Dad over. He stumbled backward against the staircase.

“You little shit!” he screamed.

Mom stuffed her keys in my hand and
shoved me back out the door. “Go! Start the car!”

I’d never done anything like that
before, but I obeyed. My chest burned with a fire I hadn’t felt in a long time;
panic, excitement, my lungs collapsing. I had to fight through it. My mom’s
life depended on it. I saw the fire in my dad’s eyes. Rage overtook him
completely. There was no semblance of humanity in him, nothing could hold back
his fury. If I didn’t get Mom out tonight, she’d be dead by morning.

I heard her scream again and again
as I fumbled with the keys. I managed to open the door and slide into the
driver’s seat. Mom’s belabored breath struggling out a whimper through the
door. “Hurry.”

The
neighborhood’s normally darkened porches suddenly illuminated. I didn’t care.
My father didn’t care. Even the neighbors didn’t care. They just wanted to make
sure that their cars weren’t being robbed or vandalized.

I
stuck the key in the ignition and turned until the car puttered to life. Mom
sprinted out the front door. “It’s on,” I shouted. “Hurry up!!!”

“Move
over!” she yelled.

I
scooted myself into the passenger seat just as she jumped inside; her nose
bled; her eye swelled. She wheezed in pain as she threw the car into reverse
and tore out of the driveway, taking the mailbox with her and barely missing a
neighbor’s cat.

My
father leapt out of the front door and flung himself on the car as my mother
shifted the car into drive.

“Whore!
You dumb-freaking whore,” he screamed. “Stop this car right now or I’m gonna
kill you!!!”

Mom
clenched her eyes closed and floored the gas pedal. Dad lost his balance and
crashed into the windshield. He bounced as we sped up and hit the roof, caving
it under his massive weight.

He
rolled off the trunk, limp and motionless. The last thing I remember was
watching my father lay on the ground, blood pooling around him.

I hoped he was dead.

Questions for Authors

Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to
grasp?

All of my books are full of messages. I am
very allegorical when I write, and this book is no exception. However, I also
make books that are entertaining, and if you want to read the book for
entertainment value, then you can do that too. My favorite part of writing is
hearing people have read the book, and hearing how they interpret the message,
but to me the message in this book is about humanity being flawed creatures,
and how you can love something even though you don’t understand or even respect
them.

Was there an Author who inspired you to write?

Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams really got
me back into writing. So did Brian K. Vaughn. Honestly, it was Vaughn who got
me back into reading comics, and it was comics that built my career. Most of
the credit goes to him.

How did you come up with the characters in your books?

I let them rattle around in my head for a
long time, years sometimes, until they are developed enough to exist on their
own. I don’t usually write anything down, especially not at first, so ideas and
characters have to work really hard for me to listen. Once they do, only then
is it time to write.

What are your current projects?

I currently have an anthology which
launches on Kickstarter this Valentine’s Day called Monsters and Other Scary Shit (www.monsteranthologycomic.com). It’s a 224
comic book anthology all about monsters from 30 different creative teams who
love monsters as much as me.

Additionally, I am releasing my first
non-fiction book this year, Sell Your
Soul: How to Build Your Creative Career, which is packed with tips, tricks,
and hacks I’ve learned over the past decade to sell better without feeling
gross about it, build your audience, make a profit at shows, and launch
products successfully.

Later this year I’ll also be releasing my
fourth novel, The Vessel, which is
like Hunger Games meets Under the Dome set a million years in the future. It’s
full of political intrigue and the same subversive religious commentary that
people have grown to expect from me, but it is by far my most commercial novel
to date. Expect much death and pain, though.

Then, I have the podcast, The Business of
Art (www.thebusinessofart.us)
which is my continuing project to help creatives build better businesses. We
just went over 150 episodes, and I’m very proud of that milestone. I feel like
we’re finally coming into our own.

Do you see writing as a career?

If you treat it as a career, it is. The
problem is most writers want to write, but don’t want to do the hard work in
marketing and selling their work. That would be like a mechanic wanting to fix
cars, but not trying to find clients. It is a career that builds over time as
well. The more books you have complete, the more money you can make. I talk
about it a lot on my show.

I find that most writers think their first
book is going to make them an insane amount of money, but writing is a long
term process. Every time you release a book, your income potential grows. Most
successful writers have several books before they can make a career at it.

Do you ever picture yourself and one of your heroines? If so, which one?

I picture myself as all of them when I’m
writing the book. My characters, all of them, are a big piece of my soul,
especially my neuroses. I find that I never understand a topic like I do after
I finish writing a book, whether it’s grief, loss, business, religion, God, or
anything, I always feel free when I finish a book, which is why I have a very
hard time reading my work. It’s hard to revisit that piece of myself after I’ve
come to terms with it.

Do you have a favorite heroine/hero from one of your books?
If so, who?

Delilah from My Father Didn’t Kill Himself is probably by favorite, because she
was able to say the exact thing she wanted to say exactly when she wanted to say
it. She was also incredibly proactive, without being violent about it. Katrina
from Katrina Hates Dead Shit (nee: Katrina Hates the Dead) is a great
character too, but so much stuff happens to her we don’t get a chance to sit
with her at all.

Delilah though, it’s a whole book about
being inside her head. I really love that. She was special to me and probably
always will be.

What kind of research do you do for your books?

None. Or I should say very minimal. My
books are collections of thoughts I’ve had over many years. I pull stuff from
all the books I’ve read over the years, and I read a lot, but there’s not a
research time. I sometimes have to look something up, but one of my favorite
things about writing in first person is… I don’t have to be so accurate with
information as long as I am true to the characters.

What is the hardest part of writing your book?

The second and third drafts. The first
draft is a slog, but at least I know it’s going to be terrible. In those first
couple of rewrites everything has to go from a terrible draft to a real story.
That’s a lot of pressure.

If you could say
anything to your readers what would it be?

You are the reason I have the energy to keep doing this.
Writing is very hard, and having you buy my work, read it, enjoy it and buy
another one is something magical that never gets old.

For new readers, my books are both entertaining and thought
provoking. If you like delving into the deepest, darkest parts of the soul
while still having a funny story, then check out my stuff.

What is your favorite
Genre and why?

Man, I really like all genres. I prefer sticking to sci-fi
and fantasy though, and adding a sense of mystery to those. If I had to pick
one, I would say sci-fi since most of my work is sci-fi related, but since my
work doesn’t really rely on hard science, there are a lot of fantastical
elements built in. I suppose it depends if you call Douglas Adams sci-fi,
because to me he is but to some he’s not.

Do you prefer to
write alone or do you like to collaborate with other authors?

Alone. I have deep trust issues.

Do you ever get
writer’s block? If so, how do you get through it?

When I have writer’s block, I know that it’s something
that’s wrong with the story. Either I’m not connecting with it and should
abandon it, or I screwed something up. I used to just abandon projects if I
couldn’t get through the block, but now I try to listen to my body better and
analyze the real problem.

How I get out of it is by writing. I train my body to sit my
butt in a chair and crank out 1,000 words a day. I can’t get up until I finish
1,000 words.

When you are reading
a book, who is your favorite author?

It changes so often. I used to love George Orwell, still do,
but I have recently found a new respect for Larry Niven and Terry Pratchett. I
don’t like reading too much of the same author too quickly. I prefer to jump
around as many minds as possible.

Do you come up with
the cover or does someone else do it?

I come up with the concept and idea, then I find an artist who
can execute on it. You need the creative vision, though, because the cover is a
reflection of a book. People should be able to judge a book by its cover, at
least insomuch as they know what to expect when they turn the page.

If you could change
anything in your writing what would that be?

I wish I could write more eloquently. I am a very matter of
fact writer. It probably comes from my journalism and screenwriting background.
I am so envious of somebody who can write a 5-page soliloquy about a chair and
make it riveting.

What book if any
would you want to be made into a movie?

I try not to dabble in this too much as I think books should
be books and movies should be movies. I would like to see Y: The Last Man as a TV show. If it were my books, the My Father Didn’t Kill Himself.

Who would you want to
play the hero/heroine?

For Y: The Last Man,
it would have to be somebody who can do funny and serious. For My Father Didn’t Kill Himself, maybe
Chloe Moretz. I used to say Aubrey Plaza but she grew out of the role.

Everyone uses
computers, tablets, phones and no one uses handwritten form or typewriters,
what do you prefer to use?

I use a computer for writing. It takes me about three months
to break in a keyboard before I’m comfortable writing a book on it. I have a
very personal relationship with my computer since I’m a touch typist. I need to
feel the spring of the keys to get inspired.

Is there a ritual you
do everything before you begin your book?

Not really. I just start when it’s ready. I usually pick a
day and then just get going. I’m usually too excited to wait until the day
though, so I start early. By my start date I usually have 5,000-10,000 words
finished, which helps me stay on pace.

What do you do when
you finish your book and turn it in to the editor?

I really should celebrate more, but I don’t. I breathe a
sigh of relief and have a glass of wine. My wife thinks I should celebrate
these things more, but to me the real celebration is when I’m holding the proof
in my hands, and then when I get the first box of sellable books. Those are
special days.

What Book Fairy is Reading

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